Teachers and reading specialists may evaluate a student's reading skills while listening to the student reading out loud. Teachers may use a running record system of making notations in the material being read by the student. The notations allow the teacher to duplicate the pauses and reading mistakes made by the student. Based on the teacher's evaluation of the student's reading skills, the teacher may recommend certain books for the student to read.
Books may be “leveled” so that the teacher may choose books appropriate to the reading skills of the student. Initially books were leveled by using a formula based on factors such as the length of words, the length of sentences, the number or density of syllables, or other linguistic elements in the text. More recently, books have been leveled based on the readability of the book in context with the presentation of the material. For example, a long word presented in conjunction with a picture that depicts the word may not be considered as difficult to read as a shorter word without cues from the surrounding text or pictures.
Many schools and learning centers have computer labs located in the classroom or in the library to assist the teacher in evaluating the student's reading skills. The student may be asked to read on-line books or electronic books (e-books), and then be asked to answer questions about what was read. These programs may provide a rating for the student. With this rating, the teacher or the librarian may then make recommendations to the student about other books or e-books that may be appropriate or interesting for the student's reading level.
It would be desirable to have an automatic reading system capable of evaluating a user's reading skills based on the user's performance in reading text out loud. Such a system would allow the user to be evaluated when a teacher or other evaluator was not available to listen to the user.
It would also be desirable to have an automatic reading system that can adjust the text of an e-book to the reading level of the user. For example, if the system detects that the user is easily reading the material, the system may increase the reading difficulty of the text. Conversely, if the user is having trouble reading the text, the system may reduce the reading difficulty of the text.
It would also be desirable to have an automatic reading system that provides feedback and reading recommendations to the user. Instead of the teacher or librarian making a book recommendation to the user, the system may provide a list of books that would be appropriate for the user's reading level. In addition the system may track the user's progress and provide feedback.